Tag Archives: Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America

Is a mini Mecca being built in Dallas, Texas? Of all the frightening propositions, this is happening right now. The Lone Star State is morphing into an Islamic hotspot. How could this happen in a state that revels in its guns and Bibles? By slow, deliberate integration and patience. The Islamic Association of North Texas (IANT) did not come to prominence overnight, but flew under the radar. Thus, the Islamic community has expanded and prospered. With the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) set to train 200 Imans in February of this year in Dallas, Sharia is coming to Texas. The subject of this conference will be “Islamic Home Finance in the West.” This is instructing Imans on Sharia Finance and implementing sharia by force. At this point, there couldn’t be a better place to set up a vast Islamic community than Sharia compliant north Dallas. It is not a matter of if, but when.

Dallas, Texas is one of the last places one would expect to encounter Sharia law, much less a thriving Islamic community. However, the Devil works while people aren’t paying attention, and when political correctness overrides ationale. The Islamic Association of North Texas has been active for thirty years in the Dallas area, making inroads and growing. With this, the IANT has come and conquered. The IANT’s website is eye opening and something every American should look at to get a feel for what an Islamic invasion looks like. This is happening in our own backyards.

More than thirty years ago, the Islamic Association of North Texas (IANT) was established to serve the local Muslim community. Since then, our community has grown considerably, and so have our needs. As we inaugurate our next quarter-century in North Texas, we introduce a novel community idea: the Islamic Village Project, a Muslim neighborhood.”

The Islamic Village Project is a multi-million dollar project that will foster great change in the Muslim community of Dallas. It will house a senior center, Youth center, Social Services department, residential quarters, play area for the children, retail center, clinic, and a separate building for IQA and Suffa Islamic Seminary classes. The project will extend from the current Masjid facility at Abrams, on the North and South side of Spring Valley across from the masjid, and West towards Greenville.

This sounds like an ambush, but in actuality it required careful planning. An Islamic village in North Texas seems like something out of the Twilight Zone. But if Sharia can come and conquer other American locales, Texas is not exempt. There is no area in the United States that is immune to an Islamic invasion. To unobservant eyes, this will look like a well formed, integrated community. For all practical purposes, this works in a secular American society that has lost its vigilance when it comes to true Islam, and never truly understood it to begin with. Islam invaded America and has thrived because of the ignorance of the American people.

One of the cornerstones of the Islamic Village will be it Educational Complex housing our IANT Quranic Academy and Suffa Islamic Seminary under the leadership of Imam Yusuf Ziya Kavakci. In addition, the Educational Complex is expected to have a Youth Center, Day Care Facilities, and playground areas for children of all ages.

“When you memorize the Quran you’ve planted the seed. The seed needs to be watered and taken care of, so make the Quran part of your life.” This is on the IQA-IANT Quranic Academy’s Facebook page.

To educate on the virtues of Islam and practice it. To build bridges of cooperation, mutual respect, and understanding among faiths.

What lies and deception! No one will be the wiser! To be in opposition is to be an “Islamophobe.” In the name of progressive idiocy, Islam is peace, in spite of the obvious truth. In 2008, five Muslim leaders, working under the guise of a charity known as the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Dallas, were arrested for funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. No doubt many of the same people involved in this terror operation are working for the IANT to build Dallas’s version of Mecca.
Read more at Freedom Outpost

The group instructs Muslims to infiltrate positions of power for the purpose of gradually implementing sharia in America.

By Ryan Mauro:

The California-based Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) is holding a conference in Texas next month where it hopes to educate 200 imams. AMJA is an anti-American Salafist group that supports abuse of women, violent jihad and the stealthy imposition of sharia in the U.S.

AMJA’s 11th Annual Imams Conference will be held on February 21-23 in Dallas, Texas with the theme, “Islamic Home Finance in the West.” The subject is part of Sharia Finance, or economics that comply with sharia.

The organization says it has already had 150 imams sign up and it has a maximum capacity of 200. Imams lead mosques and Islamic centers and are seen as the local authority on the faith, so AMJA’s teachings can impact thousands of Muslims in North America.

AMJA’s self-description says that the organization has a “moderate approach and a rejection of extremism,” but if you read what AMJA actually says, a picture emerges.

AMJA has an online bank of fatwas, or authoritative religious determinations. They explicitly command Muslims to pursue the imposition of sharia-based governance entirely. AMJA specifically criticizes those who say parts of sharia are not applicable to today, essentially saying that America should model itself after Saudi Arabia.

It instructs Muslims to infiltrate positions of power for the subversive purpose of incrementally implementing sharia. In one translated document, AMJA says Muslim judges in non-Muslim countries must “judge by the rulings of the Sharia as much as possible, even if by a ruse.”

AMJA also supports violent jihad. In 2009, AMJA responded to Israeli military operations in Gaza against the Hamas terrorist group by telling Muslims that they are required to defend their co-religionists whenever their land is attacked by an enemy. Its fatwasaid to help them “with every possible means of support: military, financial, political and journalistic.”

On the topic of jihad in America, AMJA states in an Arabic fatwa that “the Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihadat this time” [emphasis mine]:

“With our current capabilities, we are aspiring towards defensive jihad, and to improve our position with regards to jurisprudence at this stage. But there is a different discussion for each situation,” AMJA explained.

Dr. Hatem al-Haj, a senior committee member for the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), confirmed in the below fatwa from July 2011 that the Islamic punishment for apostasy is death. A couple of things stand out to me about this fatwa.

First, this fatwa was taken down from AMJA’s website as far back as October 2011, along with other fatwas on the same topic, possibly in response to an article written by my colleague Andrew Bostom exposing the rulings in that same month. (See the fatwa on archive.org, while the link on AMJA’s website is broken.) So either AMJA changed their minds about the penalty for apostasy; or, more likely, they just don’t want non-Muslims seeing what they really think on controversial topics. If that’s the case, then what else are they not telling us?

Second, the question that leads to the fatwa is tellingly not asking what the ruling is on apostasy, but rather how to explain this ruling to others, including non-Muslims. While Dr. al-Haj confirms that the penalty for apostasy from Islam is death, he also recommends that when explaining this to others, you should start with the caveat that this is something which should only be carried out in a Muslim country through the court system.

AMJA likes to hide behind that caveat, but at the same time they encourage Muslims in the United States to use the American legal system in order to establish Islamic law (see here and here). So isn’t it fair to assume that Dr. al-Haj and AMJA would like to eventually make death for apostates the law of the land here in the United States as well?

Question: In view of the questions which we have been receiving in the Islamic centers these days, we ask you, sirs, to please explain how to respond to these questions, which are about the ruling on the apostate and his punishment.

Answer: Praise be to Allah, and peace be upon the Apostle of Allah.

I think you should begin by explaining that this is one of those things which is entrusted to the judicial systems in Islamic countries, and not to individuals in these countries or any others. Then make clear that the courts will examine these situations and decide them based on several factors.

But the ruling in the shari’a is death for men (who commit apostasy) according to all four (mainstream) schools (of Islamic jurisprudence). It is the same punishment for women according to most of the schools, but according to the Hanafis it is only imprisonment. This is according to the sayings of the Prophet (PBUH): “Whoever changed his religion, kill him”; and also, “It is not permissible to shed the blood of a Muslim man who testifies that there is no god but Allah and that I am Allah’s apostle, except for one of the following three: a murderer, an adulterer, and one who leaves his religion and separates himself from the community.”

This firm ruling is not the only option for the imam, for he can rule otherwise, if there is benefit (in doing so). The evidence for this is the apostasy of some in the time of the Prophet (PBUH), on whom the ruling was not carried out. For (the Prophet) said the following about those who apostatized from the Muslims and joined the Quraysh: “Whoever departed from us and went unto them, Allah has banished.”

This is not something that was invented by Islam, but rather the ruling on the apostate is also in the Law of Moses (PBUH). The following is from the Book of Deuteronomy:

“If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you. If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying, certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known; Then shalt thou inquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you; Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword. And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the Lord thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.”

It is well-known that those who worshiped the calf were ordered to be killed. In the Book of Exodus 32:28, it mentioned the killing of 3,000 of the Levites for their apostasy: “And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.”

In explaining this issue to non-Muslims, you need to be wise and honest. May Allah help you.

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) opposes offensive jihad in the West, but for reasons that may surprise you. In an Arabic fatwa (religious decree) that doesn’t appear on its English website, it states that “the Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihadat this time [emphasis added].”

This doesn’t mean that all jihad is to be abandoned. “With our current capabilities, we are aspiring towards defensive jihad, and to improve our position with regards to jurisprudence at this stage. But there is a different discussion for each situation,” it said.

It is important to notice that it was issued in Arabic on the website of its Secretary-General, Salah Al-Sawy. Even though AMJA is based in Sacramento and its mission is to serve their American Muslim audience, it decided against issuing this fatwa in English. If it wasn’t translated by the Translating Jihad blog and reported by Andrew Bostom in 2011, we probably wouldn’t know about it.

AMJA Secretary-General Salah Al-Sawy

Deception is something that AMJA approves of. In an English-language fatwa on its website, issued by Al-Sawy inAMJA Secretary-General Salah Al-Sawy 2005, Muslims are authorized to lie for the sake of “repulsing evil” if there are “compelling strokes of necessity.” In that case, “he can indirectly say something that his listener can understand something else.”

Reports (at “Live” wire , repeated at Salon) are quoting Kansas Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach to the effect that the GOP platform has adopted an amendment which addresses Sharia encroachment. Kobach stated,

We see it from the top where the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly quoted foreign law in interpreting our U.S. constitution and it’s actually coming in at the bottom as well, it’s being raised as an argument in courts around the country. We actually put a provision affecting Kansas statute this year and I think it’s important for us to say foreign sources of law should not be used as part of common law decisions or statutory interpretations by judges in the lower state courts as well.

…I’m not aware of any court that’s accepted the argument, but in cases involving either spousal abuse or assault or other crimes against persons, sometimes defenses are raised that are based in Sharia law

Despite the predictable sneering and distressing ignorance which frames these reports by two agitprop “journalists,” and Kobach’s own noble, if incomplete assessment of the profundity of the problem, this is very welcome news.

Kobach referred to Kansas’s recently passed law-a version of American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) legislation-which should remind us all that the earliest of these laws (now also passed in Tennessee, Arizona, and Louisiana) have been in effect for several years without being challenged, let alone overturned. David Yerushalmi recently provided a very clear, didactic example of the need for ALAC-style laws, which corrects Kobach’s assessment about courts not having accepted Sharia-based arguments.

…the court enforced a Pakistani Sharia court’s judgment of custody in favor of the father even though the mother had argued that she was not provided due process because had she gone to Pakistan to contest the case, she could have been subject to capital punishment for having a new relationship with a man not sanctioned by sharia.

The salient facts of the case, and appellate court ruling, were summarized by Yerushalmi as follows:

The Maryland appellate court ruled that since the woman could not prove she’d be executed had she gone to Pakistan to litigate custody in the Pakistan Sharia Court, which is a national-state court in Pakistan, her failure to go to Pakistan and take the risk of execution precluded her from making the void as against public policy argument. ALAC would have provided the Maryland appellate court the legislative clarity to have reversed the lower court’s outrageous decision.

Here are the Maryland appellate court’s own words, cited by Yerushalmi:

Additionally, appellant [the mother] asserts that the Pakistani custody orders were founded on principles of law repugnant to Maryland public policy because the Pakistani courts allegedly “penalized the mother for not appearing without considering the affect of her admission to adultery on her ability to return to Pakistan.” In this regard, appellant points out that if convicted under Pakistani criminal law, her penalty could be public whipping or death by stoning. Although Dr. Malik [the expert] opined that appellant would be arrested for adultery if she returned to Pakistan for the custody proceedings, he also conceded that punishment for adultery was extremely unlikely and that proving the crime was extremely difficult. Given this testimony, the circuit court was not clearly erroneous in not considering the effect of whether appellant’s admission to adultery [under sharia] was “repugnant” to Maryland public policy in its failure to find that the Pakistani courts punished her for not appearing.”}

Let me summarize for the (hope against hope) edification of the “Live” wire , and Salon, agitprop journalists, the liberty-crushing, dehumanizing nature of Sharia: open-ended jihadism to subjugate the world to a totalitarian Islamic order; rejection of bedrock Western liberties-including freedom of conscience and speech-enforced by imprisonment, beating, or death; discriminatory relegation of non-Muslims to outcast, vulnerable pariahs, and even Muslim women to subservient chattel; and barbaric punishments which violate human dignity, such as amputation for theft, stoning for adultery, and lashing for alcohol consumption.

Notwithstanding the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America’s (AMJA’s) mainstream acceptance, including uncritical endorsement of its seventh annual American conference in Houston (October 15-18, 2010) to train American imams, AMJA has issued rulings which sanction the killing of apostates (here), “blasphemers” (including non-Muslims guilty of this “crime”; here), or adulterers (by stoning to death, here), and condone marital rape. Even more ominously, another Arabic-language fatwa from AMJA’s Dr. Salah Al-Sawy leaves open the possibility for offensive jihad against America and the West, as soon as Muslims are strong enough to do so. When asked whether “the Islamic missionary effort in the West … [was] to the point where it could take advantage of offensive jihad,” Al-Sawy ruled:

The Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihad at this time. With our current capabilities, we are aspiring toward defensive jihad, and to improve our position with regards to jurisprudence at this stage. But there is a different discussion for each situation. Allah Almighty knows best.

Just six months ago (3/14/12), Translating Jihad put what one might wish to deem as these circumscribed, “purely Islamic” rulings, in a more disturbing-and entirely unacceptable, seditious context. AMJA’s own words make plain the organization’s long term commitment to superseding the US legal code with its antithesis, a Sharia-based system.

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) cautioned American Muslims in a 22-page Arabic-language paper in 2008 against working in law enforcement in countries which do not rule by Allah’s dictates. One of their main concerns was that such work might cause Muslims to gain love and respect for secular laws:

…there are many evils which result from working in law enforcement, the greatest of which is compelling people to obey rulings which do not come from Allah. It could also cause reverence and love for these rulings to enter the heart of the police officer, and perhaps spread to the hearts of his family members and other Muslims who see him at the mosque or even Muslims in general. They could lose conviction of governance by Allah, and become pleased with a legal system that does not come from Allah. (italics added)

AMJA provided some allowances for Muslims to work in certain law enforcement professions, fearing that a lack of Muslim representation in this sector could bring negative effects for the Muslim community. They also reasoned that Muslims working as police officers might be able to use their positions to help the Muslim community, such as helping out with traffic near their mosques and protecting their mosques. Still, there was concern that some of these might be required to enforce laws contrary to the shari’a, such as “arrest[ing] a Muslim man whose wife said he ‘raped’ her.”

The AMJA paper specifically forbade Muslims from working for the FBI or in national security positions, due to their alleged arbitrary targeting of certain Muslims for “their political beliefs, charity work, or some of their convictions under the shari’a”–an apparent reference to counterterrorism investigations against Muslim suspects.

The paper also made clear that Muslims are to seek justice not in secular courts, but in Islamic courts which are compliant with their shari’a: “It is not permissible to pursue justice in the man-made (i.e. non-Islamic) judiciary, except where there is an absence of a shari’a-compliant substitute capable of restoring one’s rights and working out one’s grievances” (see my translation of another AMJA paper on working in the judiciary here).

Throughout the paper it is made clear that the duty of Muslims is not to uphold and respect the laws of the land in which they reside, but rather to do everything in their power to make the laws of Allah–the shari’a–supreme:

[Muslims are] to seek through legal means which exist in the countries in which they reside to make it possible for themselves to seek legal recourse in their shar’ia, and (not only) for personal affairs.

The duty to make Islam supreme comes above all, even preserving one’s life:

We must remember that preserving the religion comes before preserving one’s self, mind, wealth, honor, or offspring. […] But if saving [the individual’s] life destroys Islam, then saving Islam comes first, even if it means the individual is destroyed. This is the case with jihad against the infidels, and the killing of apostates, and so forth.

It is worth stressing once again that AMJA–whose stated purpose is to “clarify the rulings of the sharia which are relevant for those who live in America”–is a mainstream American Muslim organization. Their membership list contains a large number of highly-influential American imams and Muslim leaders, including Muhammad al-Majid of the Adam Center in Virginia; Hussein Hamed Hassan, director of the financial consultancy firm which advises Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and other large American banking institutions; Zulfiqar Ali Shah, former president of Islamic Circle of North America and current executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America; and the author of this paper, Dr. Hatem al-Haj, MD, PhD, a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics, and founder and president of “Building Blocks of Islam.”